Embracing the Suck.
I've now followed a number of soldiers' blogs as they write about their experiences 'over there'.
The most recent I've started follow is LT G.
Read his words at "Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal".
The LT has a way with words. And, unlike most, he's introduced his fellow soldiers.
(via Acute Politics)
Evil Black Gun meets Hello Kitty.
Ain't that the cutest lil' thing? I truly think the magazine is just the right touch.
(via American Digest)
Ain't that the cutest lil' thing? I truly think the magazine is just the right touch.
(via American Digest)
Bowie @ Alamo
Jim Bowie at the Alamo:"He left a corsair’s name to other times,
Linked with one virtue, and a thousand crimes."
We celebrate the virtue, and forgive the crimes; may others remember us as kindly, in spite of ourselves.
UPDATE: On a related note, a question from a Fred Thompson rally:
We can certainly understand that. :)
This day 1836, Jim Bowie arrived at the Alamo with thirty volunteers. I've occasionally thought of the Alamo over here, on those occasions we've had mortars or rockets. Of course we are not surrounded by an enemy army, nor in danger of being wiped out; the experience here is suggestive, more than similar. You do see "the rocket's red glare; the bombs bursting in air," quite literally in both cases, even though the insurgent's rocket of 2008 is probably somewhat less accurate than the British rocket of 1812.
That said, it does provide me the chance to reflect on the bravery of better men who have gone before. The Alamo is regularly celebrated here at Grim's Hall, and the model of gentlemen that defended her. Americans have long celebrated Crockett and Bowie -- see this collection of 'Bowie style' knives, made from the 1830s through the 1970s; others are still made today.
Bowie was a friend to the pirate Jean Lafitte, as was Andrew Jackson. As Byron wrote of Lafitte:
Linked with one virtue, and a thousand crimes."
We celebrate the virtue, and forgive the crimes; may others remember us as kindly, in spite of ourselves.
UPDATE: On a related note, a question from a Fred Thompson rally:
Man: Fred, I drove over 500 miles to see you.The reporter finishes the report by sighing, "I hate being a Yankee."
Thompson: Bless your heart. Let's give this man a hand. (Applause, cheers)
Man: I came over Finch Mountain in a snowstorm. (Pause) May I call you Fred?
Thompson: Absolutely.
Man: That's okay until January and I can call you Mr. President. (Laughter, more applause). Now, I've got a question.
Thompson: Yes sir.
Man: (Pause) I'm looking for a tall man who will stand tall for America. (Pause.) Who will cut the ears off of earmarks! (Pause.) Stop dead illegal immigration! (Pause.) And pull the teeth of activist judges...
Thompson: Yep.
Man: ... who take your house to build 7-Eleven! (Pause, then louder) And I want to know if you've got a Jim Bowie knife and a good strong pair (pause) of Channellock pliers! (Laughter, even more applause, calls of "That's right!" and "Hear, hear!")
We can certainly understand that. :)
No Business in the White House, But:
Huckabee's not someone I'd endorse. On the other hand:
"You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag," Huckabee said at a Myrtle Beach campaign event. "In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell them what to do with the pole."That was a great line.
Good reading
Readings for Today:
Separately, Cassandra falls in love with a guy who learned from his daughter.
Anyway, I note the story to ask: if American Dad has to learn that he has to participate in a society that treats girls as ladies, in order to protect his daughters... what does American Mom have to learn about her sons?
I have my own ideas about that, and I expect most readers can guess what they are. But I'd like to hear your thoughts.
Iowahawk notes the media menace:
A Denver newspaper columnist is arrested for stalking a story subject. In Cincinnati, a television reporter is arrested on charges of child molestation. A North Carolina newspaper reporter is arrested for harassing a local woman. A drunken Chicago Sun-Times columnist and editorial board member is arrested for wife beating. A Baltimore newspaper editor is arrested for threatening neighbors with a shotgun. In Florida, one TV reporter is arrested for DUI, while another is charged with carrying a gun into a high school. A Philadelphia news anchorwoman goes on a violent drunken rampage, assaulting a police officer. In England, a newspaper columnist is arrested for killing her elderly aunt.With statistics like these, I think we know the answer.
Unrelated incidents, or mounting evidence of that America's newsrooms have become a breeding ground for murderous, drunk, gun-wielding child molesters?
Separately, Cassandra falls in love with a guy who learned from his daughter.
What I’ve come to realize is that there are really two people inside me: the Dude Self and the Dad Self. The Dude Self has an evolutionary mandate. Namely, to get his DNA into all available fertile females. This is how I explain the compulsion toward media sluts, who, after all, sow the fantasy that women exist only for the carnal pleasure of men.I'm not quite sure why those concepts are supposed to be opposed -- I'd always thought the idea was to manage both at the same time.
But then there’s the Dad Self. The Dad Self has to worry about the survival of his wife and offspring. It might be said that his genetic material is heavily mortgaged. He regards women differently, especially if he has a daughter. Now he must think about the kind of world in which he’d like her to grow up, and especially how he’d like other males to treat her, which is to say not as a sexual chew toy, but with kindness and respect.
Anyway, I note the story to ask: if American Dad has to learn that he has to participate in a society that treats girls as ladies, in order to protect his daughters... what does American Mom have to learn about her sons?
I have my own ideas about that, and I expect most readers can guess what they are. But I'd like to hear your thoughts.
Baiting
Danton Loves Her, Too:
Hillary, that is.
Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested Sunday that Barack Obama's campaign had injected racial tension into the presidential contest....L'audace!
"This is an unfortunate story line the Obama campaign has pushed very successfully," the former first lady said in a spirited appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press.""I don't think this campaign is about gender, and I sure hope it's not about race."
Iraqi Heroes
Iraqi Heroes:
Michael Totten writes:
Iraqi Army soldiers have a terrible reputation for cowardice and corruption – especially in Baghdad – but it’s unfair to write them all off after reading the news out of Iraq’s capital Sunday. Three Iraqi Army soldiers tackled a suicide bomber at an Army Day parade and were killed when he exploded his vest....
These Iraqis deserve recognition, and they deserved to be recognized by their names. Yet I could not find their names cited in any media articles. All three of their names generate zero hits using Google at the time of this writing. I had to contact Baghdad myself to find out who they were. Lieutenant Colonel James Hutton was kind enough to pass their names on....
Here are the names of the three brave Iraqis who hurled themselves on an exploding suicide bomber.
Malik Abdul Ghanem
Asa’ad Hussein Ali
Abdul-Hamza Abdul-Hassan Rissan
They were friends the Americans and Iraqis did not know we had until they were gone.
Boredom
The New Fight:
Things can carry on like this just as long as they want.
The Marines are bored:
After preparing to confront one of the most deadly insurgencies America has ever faced, and steeped in the legend of Marine aggressiveness in the counterterrorist fight, the leathernecks of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines are fighting a pitched battle against boredom.It's not so boring here -- we have some pretty aggressive operations ongoing. Yet it's also true that we haven't lost anybody lately. The combination of improved tactics and Iraqi cooperation with the COIN has vastly limited casualties versus last year.
With violence across the province dropping precipitously over most of the past year, Marines who were girding for a brawl on this latest rotation have had to dial back their warrior ways for a softer approach.
Though their thoughts are tinged with disappointment, many are nevertheless practical about the new reality.
"There's not much going on this time around," said Cpl. Ken Dickerson, 1st squad leader with Lima Company, 3/3's 3rd Platoon. "But at least we're not losing anybody."
Things can carry on like this just as long as they want.
Moral Instincts
Moral Instincts:
The Zero-Sum Game system for judging morality is a basis I hadn't considered. It suffers from one obvious limitation: by its nature, it limits moral judgments to utilitarian grounds. You can use these games to measure whether our sense of ethics is in accord with practical benefits: more food, say.
A key question of ethics, however, is establishing what the good is. Aristotle asserts, I believe correctly, that the rational part of the soul is not useful here: it is the emotive part that determines what is to be desired, and the rational part is limited to means-to-the-end. The Zero-Sum Game method is thus only good as a test for whether the means-to-the-end method is effective or not. As a result, its use as a test for ethics is quite limited.
UPDATE: The long section on what the author calls "trolleyology" demonstrates something important about the dilemma mentioned above.
We may also find ourselves with the power to change the emotion that rules in these cases, so that emotion still wins, but not in the way it currently does. Should we? Why? What defensible answer is there to the question, "Why?"
Perilous matters, these.
Steven Pinker's latest is in the New York Times; and while I'm sure several of you will scoff at the idea of looking toward that source for hints on morality, it's an interesting read, when taken together with Joe's piece below. It treats the moral dimension in similar terms to those we have employed in debating genetic engineering.
One of the important areas comes when looking at whether there is a rational basis for morality. He cites two:
One is the prevalence of nonzero-sum games. In many arenas of life, two parties are objectively better off if they both act in a nonselfish way than if each of them acts selfishly. You and I are both better off if we share our surpluses, rescue each other’s children in danger and refrain from shooting at each other, compared with hoarding our surpluses while they rot, letting the other’s child drown while we file our nails or feuding like the Hatfields and McCoys. Granted, I might be a bit better off if I acted selfishly at your expense and you played the sucker, but the same is true for you with me, so if each of us tried for these advantages, we’d both end up worse off. Any neutral observer, and you and I if we could talk it over rationally, would have to conclude that the state we should aim for is the one in which we both are unselfish. These spreadsheet projections are not quirks of brain wiring, nor are they dictated by a supernatural power; they are in the nature of things.One of the things we discussed in detail below was the peril to the Golden Rule as a limiting rule of ethics that could arise from tampering with inherited human nature. As we are, the Golden Rule limits us: but it could as easily, and just as rationally, become a license rather than a limitation if we are allowed to edit each other.
The other external support for morality is a feature of rationality itself: that it cannot depend on the egocentric vantage point of the reasoner. If I appeal to you to do anything that affects me — to get off my foot, or tell me the time or not run me over with your car — then I can’t do it in a way that privileges my interests over yours (say, retaining my right to run you over with my car) if I want you to take me seriously. Unless I am Galactic Overlord, I have to state my case in a way that would force me to treat you in kind. I can’t act as if my interests are special just because I’m me and you’re not, any more than I can persuade you that the spot I am standing on is a special place in the universe just because I happen to be standing on it.
Not coincidentally, the core of this idea — the interchangeability of perspectives — keeps reappearing in history’s best-thought-through moral philosophies, including the Golden Rule (itself discovered many times); Spinoza’s Viewpoint of Eternity; the Social Contract of Hobbes, Rousseau and Locke; Kant’s Categorical Imperative; and Rawls’s Veil of Ignorance. It also underlies Peter Singer’s theory of the Expanding Circle — the optimistic proposal that our moral sense, though shaped by evolution to overvalue self, kin and clan, can propel us on a path of moral progress, as our reasoning forces us to generalize it to larger and larger circles of sentient beings.
The Zero-Sum Game system for judging morality is a basis I hadn't considered. It suffers from one obvious limitation: by its nature, it limits moral judgments to utilitarian grounds. You can use these games to measure whether our sense of ethics is in accord with practical benefits: more food, say.
A key question of ethics, however, is establishing what the good is. Aristotle asserts, I believe correctly, that the rational part of the soul is not useful here: it is the emotive part that determines what is to be desired, and the rational part is limited to means-to-the-end. The Zero-Sum Game method is thus only good as a test for whether the means-to-the-end method is effective or not. As a result, its use as a test for ethics is quite limited.
UPDATE: The long section on what the author calls "trolleyology" demonstrates something important about the dilemma mentioned above.
The gap between people’s convictions and their justifications is also on display in the favorite new sandbox for moral psychologists, a thought experiment devised by the philosophers Philippa Foot and Judith Jarvis Thomson called the Trolley Problem. On your morning walk, you see a trolley car hurtling down the track, the conductor slumped over the controls. In the path of the trolley are five men working on the track, oblivious to the danger. You are standing at a fork in the track and can pull a lever that will divert the trolley onto a spur, saving the five men. Unfortunately, the trolley would then run over a single worker who is laboring on the spur. Is it permissible to throw the switch, killing one man to save five? Almost everyone says “yes.”That's fine, and useful. But the important questions are these: is it bad that we have nonutilitarian ethical calculations arising from irrational emotions? We may find ourselves with the power to change the conditions in which the emotions rule. Should we? Is that an improvement?
Consider now a different scene. You are on a bridge overlooking the tracks and have spotted the runaway trolley bearing down on the five workers. Now the only way to stop the trolley is to throw a heavy object in its path. And the only heavy object within reach is a fat man standing next to you. Should you throw the man off the bridge?
...
When people pondered the dilemmas that required killing someone with their bare hands, several networks in their brains lighted up. One, which included the medial (inward-facing) parts of the frontal lobes, has been implicated in emotions about other people. A second, the dorsolateral (upper and outer-facing) surface of the frontal lobes, has been implicated in ongoing mental computation (including nonmoral reasoning, like deciding whether to get somewhere by plane or train). And a third region, the anterior cingulate cortex (an evolutionarily ancient strip lying at the base of the inner surface of each cerebral hemisphere), registers a conflict between an urge coming from one part of the brain and an advisory coming from another.
But when the people were pondering a hands-off dilemma, like switching the trolley onto the spur with the single worker, the brain reacted differently: only the area involved in rational calculation stood out. Other studies have shown that neurological patients who have blunted emotions because of damage to the frontal lobes become utilitarians: they think it makes perfect sense to throw the fat man off the bridge. Together, the findings corroborate Greene’s theory that our nonutilitarian intuitions come from the victory of an emotional impulse over a cost-benefit analysis.
We may also find ourselves with the power to change the emotion that rules in these cases, so that emotion still wins, but not in the way it currently does. Should we? Why? What defensible answer is there to the question, "Why?"
Perilous matters, these.
Snow in Baghdad
Snow in Baghdad:
When I flew in last year, we got rain even though it almost never rains in the summer. People remarked that Iraq must love me, and want to show herself off in her finest and rarest raiments.
So today, on my return, Baghdad had her first snowstorm in a hundred years.
"It is the first time we've seen snow in Baghdad," said 60-year-old Hassan Zahar. "We've seen sleet before, but never snow. I looked at the faces of all the people, they were astonished," he said.That all sounds good to me.
"A few minutes ago, I was covered with snowflakes. In my hair, on my shoulders. I invite all the people to enjoy peace, because the snow means peace," he said.
Traffic policeman Murtadha Fadhil, huddling under a balcony to keep dry, declared the snow "a new sign of the new Iraq."
"It's a sign of hope. We hope Iraqis will purify their hearts and politicians will work for the prosperity of all Iraqis."
Greedy Geezers.
These sorts of shenanigans are what I'm talking about:
Like Lo-Pan said: "This just pisses me off." Not only is the old bag misrepresenting her situation, she and her hubby are collecting tax rebates in two states. This sort of behavior just cannot be tolerated. Because its only going to get worse.
(via Instapundit)
These sorts of shenanigans are what I'm talking about:
On the eve of a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Indiana Voter ID law has become a story with a twist: One of the individuals used by opponents to the law as an example of how the law hurts older Hoosiers is registered to vote in two states.
Faye Buis-Ewing, 72, who has been telling the media she is a 50-year
resident of Indiana, at one point in the past few years also claimed two states as her primary residence and received a homestead exemption on her property taxes in both states.
Like Lo-Pan said: "This just pisses me off." Not only is the old bag misrepresenting her situation, she and her hubby are collecting tax rebates in two states. This sort of behavior just cannot be tolerated. Because its only going to get worse.
(via Instapundit)
Dawson Co
Dawson County, GA:
Today was my last day home; bright and early tomorrow I return to the fray. I spent the last two days here doing some important chores: fixing the truck, adjusting the water heater, taking down the Christmas tree, etc. Through these various chores I built up a store of trash to take to the dump, so the wee wife and I went over there.
Now, Dawson County Georgia employs convicts -- in the old-fashioned striped pants, even -- to unload the garbage from people's trucks and put it in the dump. The current one has been there a while, which suggests he is a repeat offender. In any event, he's come to know my wife through her weekly visits.
He was excited to see me, but she explained that I was leaving for Iraq the very next day. He nodded sadly, and said to me, "Sir, I really want to thank you for all you folks are doing over there."
Noam Chomsky would have eaten his own liver in despair.
But here in Dawson County we just say: "He's a good lad, really -- just likes to get a bit wild on the weekend."
Writing your own epitaph. Or something like that.
Blogger Andrew Olmstead was killed in Iraq, and left something behind to be published in case of his death.
Read it here.
May the earth lie lightly upon him.
(via Instapundit)
Blogger Andrew Olmstead was killed in Iraq, and left something behind to be published in case of his death.
Read it here.
May the earth lie lightly upon him.
(via Instapundit)
Friday Lyrics - The Idiot
Friday Lyrics:
Sometimes the right song can cheer me up just by thinking about it. During my first tour overseas, at the worst times, when the work wasn't going well and my mistakes were piling up, and the people I wanted to impress were thinking I was a fool and I was inclining to agree, so that southern Iraq was seeming less like a grand opportunity and more like a flat, muddy, buggy piece of ground...this song brought my spirits up again:
I often take these night-shift walks when the foreman's not around.
I turn my back on the cooling stacks and make for open ground.
For out beyond the tank-farm vents, where the gas-flare makes no sound,
I forget the stink and I always think back to that eastern town.
I remember back six years ago this western life I chose,
And every day the news would say, "Some factory's going to close."
Well, I could've stayed to take the dole, but I'm not one of those.
I get nothing free and that makes me -- an idiot, I suppose.
So I bid farewell to that eastern town I nevermore will see.
But work I must, so I eat this dust and breathe refinery.
Oh, I miss the green and the woods and streams, and I don't like cowboy clothes,
But I like being free and that makes me -- an idiot, I suppose.
In the notes to the album, the songwriter is careful to explain that he doesn't necessarily agree with the sentiments expressed in all his songs, but that they're the real voices of people he met in western Canada. An artist who can go beyond himself, to feel and write something like this, is someone I can admire. His lyrics aren't especially clever or innovative (as you can see from the rest of the album), but he has got imagination in the best sense of the word, and that counts for much.
Sometimes the right song can cheer me up just by thinking about it. During my first tour overseas, at the worst times, when the work wasn't going well and my mistakes were piling up, and the people I wanted to impress were thinking I was a fool and I was inclining to agree, so that southern Iraq was seeming less like a grand opportunity and more like a flat, muddy, buggy piece of ground...this song brought my spirits up again:
I often take these night-shift walks when the foreman's not around.
I turn my back on the cooling stacks and make for open ground.
For out beyond the tank-farm vents, where the gas-flare makes no sound,
I forget the stink and I always think back to that eastern town.
I remember back six years ago this western life I chose,
And every day the news would say, "Some factory's going to close."
Well, I could've stayed to take the dole, but I'm not one of those.
I get nothing free and that makes me -- an idiot, I suppose.
So I bid farewell to that eastern town I nevermore will see.
But work I must, so I eat this dust and breathe refinery.
Oh, I miss the green and the woods and streams, and I don't like cowboy clothes,
But I like being free and that makes me -- an idiot, I suppose.
In the notes to the album, the songwriter is careful to explain that he doesn't necessarily agree with the sentiments expressed in all his songs, but that they're the real voices of people he met in western Canada. An artist who can go beyond himself, to feel and write something like this, is someone I can admire. His lyrics aren't especially clever or innovative (as you can see from the rest of the album), but he has got imagination in the best sense of the word, and that counts for much.
Sam Harris - Mother Nature
A Splendid Answer:
At Gene Expression, I found a link to Edge, where many scientific and other figures were asked the simple question: What have you changed your mind about, and why?
Some writers we know well are there - Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker - and others I hadn't thought about in ages[1], such the chemist Robert Shapiro (he wrote an excellent popular book on origin-of-life theory back in the eighties). Right next to his entry, I found this one by Sam Harris, worth quoting:
But there is a beautiful, hopeful side to this. Our coevals are learning, rapidly, more and ever more about how our minds and bodies are put together - and the technology to improve them will come, if not in our lifetimes, perhaps not long after. We've been able to change the form and abilities of our domestic animals through breeding - something much faster, with greater potential, is on the way.
I come from a civilization far better than my ancestors a few centuries back could imagine - and I think I will die happy, even without descendants, if I expect it will be in better hands, and more vastly improved a century hence than I can hope to imagine.
[1] The author of this opinion might interest some people here, who discuss the merits of wood and plastic in gun butts...the old ways were the way they were for a purpose; and as I argued, roughly, in one of my first comments here, I would rather cultivate the practical spirit of the man who fought with a sword of bronze (because that was the best weapon available) than to try to fight with his actual weapons. But we have talked this over before.
At Gene Expression, I found a link to Edge, where many scientific and other figures were asked the simple question: What have you changed your mind about, and why?
Some writers we know well are there - Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker - and others I hadn't thought about in ages[1], such the chemist Robert Shapiro (he wrote an excellent popular book on origin-of-life theory back in the eighties). Right next to his entry, I found this one by Sam Harris, worth quoting:
Extremely well put. A religious friend of mine once suggested that Man and his works ought, instead, to be considered a part of nature, as much as termite mounds or coral reefs, and while I didn't adopt most of his ideas, that one struck me as very convincing. I remember growing up with this contrary idea that Nature was something fundamentally different from Artifice - that this Nature was in some kind of static, harmonious "balance," that would continue more or less forever if wicked Man did not destroy it. As Harris says:Like many people, I once trusted in the wisdom of Nature. I imagined that there were real boundaries between the natural and the artificial, between one species and another, and thought that, with the advent of genetic engineering, we would be tinkering with life at our peril. I now believe that this romantic view of Nature is a stultifying and dangerous mythology.
Every 100 million years or so, an asteroid or comet the size of a mountain smashes into the earth, killing nearly everything that lives. If ever we needed proof of Nature's indifference to the welfare of complex organisms such as ourselves, there it is. The history of life on this planet has been one of merciless destruction and blind, lurching renewal.Perhaps the opposite view has a strong aesthetic appeal - I have always been emotionally attracted to the idea that our problems are the same as the ancients', and the basic human comedy and tragedy will go on as long as the species does - and if Grim tells me true, many thinkers who spend a lot of time experiencing the outdoors directly incline to spiritual ideas, to the idea that thoughts, and feelings, and perhaps some greater Mind than theirs, are eternal and unchanging. Yet in reading the science I do (in popular versions these days; graduate school is long behind), I can't find room for these eternal entities, or an ordering Power in Nature that thinks and feels, and that wanted humans to be as they are, and fixed them.
But there is a beautiful, hopeful side to this. Our coevals are learning, rapidly, more and ever more about how our minds and bodies are put together - and the technology to improve them will come, if not in our lifetimes, perhaps not long after. We've been able to change the form and abilities of our domestic animals through breeding - something much faster, with greater potential, is on the way.
Nothing in the natural order demands that our descendants resemble us in any particular way. Very likely, they will not resemble us. We will almost certainly transform ourselves, likely beyond recognition, in the generations to come.Exactly. Suppose that a team of genetic engineers funded and equipped by a large corporation proceeded to create 10,000 superhuman specimens, supremely intelligent, healthy, naturally hardworking and honest - what would be your response? I would be rejoicing at the thought of all these newcomers might create or discover. Some others, who believe in a Creator, might be troubled at the implications of improving upon His handiwork (though the date suggesting that religiosity itself is heritable should be likewise troubling - if we are judged, in the end, by our beliefs. But theology is flexible, the more thoughtful believers accept a God who can tolerate things they scarce imagined before). (A few small-minded creatures wouldn't get past the naked fear - "They'll outdo me - they'll take my job!") If there's no overarching Order to sustain us "World Without End," there's no overarching Rule to stop us building better lives, better kinds of lives, than have ever existed before.
Will this be a good thing? The question presupposes that we have a viable alternative. But what is the alternative to our taking charge of our biological destiny? Might we be better off just leaving things to the wisdom of Nature? I once believed this. But we know that Nature has no concern for individuals or for species.
I come from a civilization far better than my ancestors a few centuries back could imagine - and I think I will die happy, even without descendants, if I expect it will be in better hands, and more vastly improved a century hence than I can hope to imagine.
[1] The author of this opinion might interest some people here, who discuss the merits of wood and plastic in gun butts...the old ways were the way they were for a purpose; and as I argued, roughly, in one of my first comments here, I would rather cultivate the practical spirit of the man who fought with a sword of bronze (because that was the best weapon available) than to try to fight with his actual weapons. But we have talked this over before.
The Land Without A King
The Land Without A King:
THEN stood the realm in great jeopardy long while, for every lord that was mighty of men made him strong, and many weened to have been king. Then Merlin went to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and counselled him for to send for all the lords of the realm, and all the gentlemen of arms, that they should to London come by Christmas, upon pain of cursing; and for this cause, that Jesus, that was born on that night, that he would of his great mercy show some miracle, as he was come to be king of mankind, for to show some miracle who should be rightwise king of this realm.
What better men than me have done, I know. I know the reasons and could recite them better than most; and I believe in them. But there is the price, laid plain.
I have been gone too long.
I left behind a son I thought invincible; fearless. All his life, five years long, he feared 'neither fire nor iron,' as the heroes of Hrolf Kraki's hall swore they would not. He did not fear heights, nor strangers, nor thunder, nor anything at all. He never had.
Now he is terrified of everything. He clings to every leg, kisses and hugs everyone, as if to plead for kindness. He is given to illness and panic. I never knew how much of his courage was from me; but without me, his mother reminds me, he is only a little boy.
It has been a hard year. His grandmother's ashes will be buried tomorrow. His mother has been gone to care for her. His father has been gone long months, and will be gone long months yet. All the things he knew and trusted were swept away, and he was alone.
This is the message of Le Morte D'Arthur. It is the message of the Beowulf also: that the king is the land, and without his strength the people are broken apart, at the mercy of a merciless world. It is the message of the Odyssey:
There she found the lordly suitors seated on hides of the oxen which they had killed and eaten, and playing draughts in front of the house. Men-servants and pages were bustling about to wait upon them, some mixing wine with water in the mixing-bowls, some cleaning down the tables with wet sponges and laying them out again, and some cutting up great quantities of meat.What have I done to this little boy?
Telemachus saw her long before any one else did. He was sitting moodily among the suitors thinking about his brave father, and how he would send them flying out of the house, if he were to come to his own again and be honoured as in days gone by.
What better men than me have done, I know. I know the reasons and could recite them better than most; and I believe in them. But there is the price, laid plain.
The Great Fall of China.
Via Instapundit, this article from the LA Times, in which the World Bank reports that China's economy is smaller than recently thought. About 40% smaller.
"...China, it turns out, isn't a $10-trillion economy on the brink of catching up with the United States. It is a $6-trillion economy, less than half our size. For the foreseeable future, China will have far less money to spend on its military and will face much deeper social and economic problems at home than experts previously believed."
Wow. 4 trillion dollars just went poof. Just wow.
Via Instapundit, this article from the LA Times, in which the World Bank reports that China's economy is smaller than recently thought. About 40% smaller.
"...China, it turns out, isn't a $10-trillion economy on the brink of catching up with the United States. It is a $6-trillion economy, less than half our size. For the foreseeable future, China will have far less money to spend on its military and will face much deeper social and economic problems at home than experts previously believed."
Wow. 4 trillion dollars just went poof. Just wow.
Christmas Cheer
Christmas Cheer:
Via our old friend Dad29, a pointer to another of the great stories from LawDog:
Tactical advice for those intending to rob the Santa-Claus-outfit-wearing Salvation Army volunteers at shopping malls.And a happy new year.
1. In this part of the country, those Santa's are rednecks. Large rednecks. With an attitude to match.
2. When you and your homie stick a gun in Santa's face and demand, "Gimme the bucket!" he might take you precisely and exactly at your word. Literally.
3. As you watch your homie lying on the ground, bucket over his head and Santa stomping it flat onto his (unlovely) features, it's not a good idea to forget that you're within grabbing range of Santa - or to let your gun hand sag to your side.
4. Failure to observe #3 above will result in an infuriated Santa holding your head in an armlock under his left arm while, with his right hand, he beats you heavily over the bonce with his festive Christmas bell. This musical accompaniment, whilst no carol, is nevertheless pleasing to the bystanders' ears. The same might be said about your screams.
5. When passing shoppers stop, gather around and start applauding Santa's actions, it's not a good idea to yell at them that they're mother[deleted] [deleted] and beg them to make this [deleted] stop hitting you. This may - nay, gentle reader, this WILL - encourage some of them to offer to help Santa with the hitting . . . and encourage him to accept their offer.
6. When responding cops arrive, rush up to the scene with guns drawn, and promptly sag to the ground in hysterics while ignoring your pleas for help, it's not a good idea to swear at them in words of distinctly non-festive hue. This will result in their handling the rest of your interaction in a less than sympathetic manner (drawing further cheers from the by now numerous onlookers).
7. As you languish (with your battered homie) in the back of an ambulance, both of you being treated by the medics for bleeding from the head, it's particularly galling to see Santa's now somewhat battered bucket being filled to overflowing by cheering shoppers and the responding police officers, all of whom seem rather in a rather more more festive and cheerful mood now than they did before you made your move.
8. And a merry Redneck Christmas to both of you, idiots. Ho-ho-ho.
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